Patch

NAME

patch - apply a diff file to an original

SYNOPSIS

patch [options] [originalfile [patchfile]]

but usually just

patch -pnum <patchfile

DESCRIPTION

patch takes a patch file patchfile containing a difference listing produced by the diff program and applies those differences to one or more original files, producing patched versions. Normally the patched versions are put in place of the originals. Backups can be made; see the -b or --backup option. The names of the files to be patched are usually taken from the patch file, but if there’s just one file to be patched it can specified on the command line as originalfile.

Upon startup, patch attempts to determine the type of the diff listing, unless overruled by a -c (--context), -e (--ed), -n (--normal), or -u (--unified) option. Context diffs (old-style, new-style, and unified) and normal diffs are applied by the patch program itself, while ed diffs are simply fed to the ed(1) editor via a pipe.

patch tries to skip any leading garbage, apply the diff, and then skip any trailing garbage. Thus you could feed an article or message containing a diff listing to patch, and it should work. If the entire diff is indented by a consistent amount, or if a context diff contains lines ending in CRLF or is encapsulated one or more times by prepending "- " to lines starting with "-" as specified by Internet RFC 934, this is taken into account.

With context diffs, and to a lesser extent with normal diffs, patch can detect when the line numbers mentioned in the patch are incorrect, and attempts to find the correct place to apply each hunk of the patch. As a first guess, it takes the line number mentioned for the hunk, plus or minus any offset used in applying the previous hunk. If that is not the correct place, patch scans both forwards and backwards for a set of lines matching the context given in the hunk. First patch looks for a place where all lines of the context match. If no such place is found, and it’s a context diff, and the maximum fuzz factor is set to 1 or more, then another scan takes place ignoring the first and last line of context. If that fails, and the maximum fuzz factor is set to 2 or more, the first two and last two lines of context are ignored, and another scan is made. (The default maximum fuzz factor is 2.) If patch cannot find a place to install that hunk of the patch, it puts the hunk out to a reject file, which normally is the name of the output file plus a .rej suffix, or # if .rej would generate a file name that is too long (if even appending the single character # makes the file name too long, then # replaces the file name’s last character). (The rejected hunk comes out in ordinary context diff form regardless of the input patch’s form. If the input was a normal diff, many of the contexts are simply null.) The line numbers on the hunks in the reject file may be different than in the patch file: they reflect the approximate location patch thinks the failed hunks belong in the new file rather than the old one.

As each hunk is completed, you are told if the hunk failed, and if so which line (in the new file) patch thought the hunk should go on. If the hunk is installed at a different line from the line number specified in the diff you are told the offset. A single large offset may indicate that a hunk was installed in the wrong place. You are also told if a fuzz factor was used to make the match, in which case you should also be slightly suspicious. If the --verbose option is given, you are also told about hunks that match exactly.

If no original file origfile is specified on the command line, patch tries to figure out from the leading garbage what the name of the file to edit is, using the following rules.

First, patch takes an ordered list of candidate file names as follows: